Wellbeing of Secondary Schools

The Faculty of Education and Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education have partnered to conduct a large multi-phased study to examine constructs of wellbeing in adolescence to form a reliable and culturally valid measure alongside more general insights as to the cultural factors and issues that affect adolescent wellbeing in Kazakhstan. Full details of the project, including the outputs, are available here.

Purpose of the research

To adapt Western constructs and scales of wellbeing to provide a culturally sensitive and appropriate instrument that will assist in identifying and then improve young people’s wellbeing across the older age range of students in secondary schools in Kazakhstan.

Aims

Develop existing scales to ensure they are culturally appropriate for use in Kazakhstan. Thus adopt a sensitive approach to indigenous cultural factors in order to preclude the simple implantation of Western models.

Examine how schools (i.e. students, teachers, and school psychologists) conceptualise students’ wellbeing and to track student measures of this during an academic year.

Provide a sustainable approach for examining the wellbeing of students in Kazakhstan irrespective of background.

Improve the professional development of psychologists in Kazakhstan via exposure to current trends in international research-based practice.

Scope and sample

There were four major phases of research covering several regions (urban and rural locations) in each phase across Kazakhstan. Read more about scope and research sample here.